Sawiris, who supported the rebels on Tahrir Square, was sharing with me (and a dinner audience at Toronto's Four Seasons hotel) his mystification at the rapacious ways of autocrats: "I've never understood in my life why all these dictators, when they stole, why didn't they just steal a billion and spend the rest on the people."

What was interesting to me was his choice of $1 billion as the appropriate cap on dictatorial looting. In his world, I wondered, was $1 billion the size of fortune to aim for?

"Yes, to cover the fringe benefits, the plane, the boat, it takes a billion," Sawiris told me. "I mean, that's my number for the minimum I want to go down—if I go down."